My plans for Columbia are ambitious and controversial. Many people will disagree with them and I welcome it, that's what the comments field is for. I think Columbia has always been something special and I'm proud to call it my hometown. I want it to stay just as special in the future as it was in the past and that involves BIG decisions, BIG change, BIG investment, and BIG Redvelopment

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Since the life of a Village Center is constantly changing and evolving, I
don't find it strange that I'm proposing more redevelopment efforts at
Owen Brown Village Center. In the early 2000s, GFS Realty, them owner of
Owen Brown demolished a row of stores and rebuilt closer to the front
of the Center and used the space once occupied by the old row of stores
to expand the Giant. This created a newly modernized Giant and a new row
of stores but that's it.

Had GFS Realty wanted to
spent the money and do it right, they would have built a new Giant
roughly where the new row of stores are, demolished the two back strips
of stores and built the entire Center facing Cradlerock Way. The
finished product would have looked like Dorsey's Search Village Center.
But as it stands now, the Giant cuts the Village Center in half and only
the front half sees foot traffic. The back half resembles a ghost town.
My redevelopment plan although it doesn;t include building a new Giant,
it does include demolishing the back half and redeveloping those spaces
as ground floor Retail to a new Apartment Building (like in Wilde Lake)
and the entire Center will flow smoother.

To
minimize disruption to existing businesses, work would have to be done
in phases. The first phase is to build two pad sites just to the right
of the Interfaith Center on what is now fields.The pad sites will
include Bank of America and the other one include Sonoma's Bar &
Grille. Also part of Phase I would be to rebuild the small professional
building behind the Bank of America. The new location for this building
will be the nook that is in between the Giant and the Avis Car Rental.
Once Phase I is completed both the small professional building and the
Bank of America Building will be demolished and the space Somona's is
currently in will never host another tenant again.

Phase
II includes building the Apartments. The building will be located just
left of the existing building and where the Bank of America once stood.
It will run back towards the old professional building I had demolished.
It will have ground floor Retail. The attached Parking Garage will have
Apartments on all sides of it and will be placed on an unused parking
lot at the back of the Center. The parking garage will also contain
ground floor Retail.

The ground floor Retail
will contain the stores that are currently in the back half (Warren's
Barbershop, Future Nails, Chick 'N Friends, Budget/Avis Rent-A-Car, and
Hunan Master/Chinese Gourmet. With Sonoma's moving to a pad site, there
will be three vacancies now. I will build these vacancies into the new
Retail to lure three new tenants into the Center. My ideas include; An
Ice Cream/FroYo Shop, Women's Hair Salon/Spa, Ethnic Hair Salon, Kabob,
and Sushi/Fo Asian Fusion Restaurant. Once this has all been built, the
back half of the Center will be demolished.

Phase
III includes the professional Center. This will be relocated behind the
Giant so that the illusion that the Center is being cut in half by the
Giant is lessened. After that, the existing professional Center will be
demolished. Phase IV is a simple one that includes updating the existing
facades to match the new construction. A Village Green will be built
close to the tunnel going under Cradlerock Way to expand Lake Elkhorn
into the Village Center. The road will access all new and existing
structures and will start and stop at existing locations. With an
updated flow of the Village Center, Owen Brown will stay viable for
years to come.

Friday, February 5, 2016

With Kimco in the process of redeveloping Wilde Lake Village Center as a
mixed use by ading Apartments into the mix, it showed that perhaps
other ailing Village Centers without a full service grocer anchor tenant
can go the way of mixed use and build a larger critical mass while
attracting people to the centers in other ways.

Enter
the County who has purchased Long Reach Village Center when it lost its
anchor tenant and is attempting to redevelop the Center as a mix of
Retail, Apartments, with a strong Arts Component. Columbia already has
an Arts Center in Long Reach but the County is trying to move its Arts
programs currently at the old Rockland Elementary School to Long Reach
as well. In addition, one of the redevelopment proposals shows a portion
of the old Safeway space being used as Artist space while some of the
proposed Apartments will be subsidized for Artists.

At
first it seemed that this mixed use redevelopment was only an option
for struggling Village Centers with no Grocery Store, indeed the void
left by a vacant Grocery Store will make the Center more of a blank
slate for redevelopment. But then Kimco did something that surprised me.
It probably surprised many others as well. It submitted a site plan of a
redeveloped Hickory Ridge Village Center as mixed use. Hickory Ridge is
one of Columbia's most successful Village Centers anchored by a high
Volume Giant. So what's the deal?

I can't speak
for Kimco but I believe that coming up with plans like this is to
ensure other Village Centers remain modern and viable by keeping large
critical masses living near and in the Village Centers. They probably
chose Hickory Ridge because it mostly has lower density Single Family
Homes surrounding it. The Giant has no plans to leave the center and
Kimco's plans shows Giant in the same anchor spot.

The
current layout of the Village Center shows a pedestrian promenade known
as "The Avenue" with shops on either side of it. There are also parking
lots both in front of and in back in of the Avenue. The strip of shops
that doesn't have the Giant is proposed to be demolished to give the
Center an open feel. The Apartments would go on a parcel of the front
parking lot closest to the Cedar Lane and Freetown Road intersection
with the majority of the Retail from the demolished strip would be
located on the ground floor of the Apartments. There are three Retail
pad sites proposed which would most likely contain the larger footprint
Restaurants (Luna Bella, Peking Chef, Hickory Ridge Grille.) The Retail
strip connected to the Giant would remain unchanged as will the Sunoco
Gas Station.

Upon coming across these
redevelopment plans, I began looking at the other six Village Centers in
Columbia and I began looking at parcels surrounding the Centers and
their space for mixed use while simultaneously opening them up to give
them better road visibility. I was able to easily come up with mixed use
redevelopment plans for all of the Village Center with the exception of
Harpers Choice which already has loft Apartments above it. The
following posts will address each Village Center in detail and my plan
to redevelop it to keep it viable for decades to come.